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¡¥China Times¡¦ editor
threatens student with lawsuit
EMPTY WORDS? The editor said that although he
had wanted to file a lawsuit against the student he thought had created an image
of him, the student was not his real target
By Loa Iok-sin / Staff reporter
National Tsing Hua University
student Chen Wei-ting holds a placard calling for freedom of speech in front of
the Ministry of Transportation and Communications in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Chen Ping-hung, Taipei Times
Despite repeated threats that he would
file a lawsuit against National Tsing Hua University student Chen Wei-ting (³¯¬°§Ê)
over an image posted on Facebook, China Times Weekly deputy editor-in-chief Lin
Chao-hsin (ªL´ÂøÊ) had yet to act on his threat yesterday, while Chen said he was
ready to defend freedom of speech on the Internet.
¡§Instead of finding out the truth about the ¡¥walking fee incident,¡¦ Want Want
China Times Media Group chose to [threaten to] file a lawsuit against a college
student for posting an image on Facebook,¡¨ Chen told a news conference in Taipei
yesterday morning. ¡§The lawsuit is not only against me, it¡¦s against all
netizens, and Taiwanese civil society.¡¨
Chen was referring to a lawsuit that Lin has repeatedly vowed to bring against
him for posting a snapshot of a CTiTV news report of a student protest against
the merger of Want Want and cable TV service provider China Network Systems
(CNS) on Wednesday.
On Friday, Want Want Group¡¦s media outlets ¡X the Chinese--language China Times,
China Times Weekly and CTiTV ¡X all reported that the student crowd was paid to
stage the protest, and implied, without providing evidence, that Academia Sinica
research fellow Huang Kuo-chang (¶À°ê©÷), who organized a separate protest earlier,
was behind the incident.
Netizens took a snapshot from the CTiTV report on the protest that showed Lin
among the crowd and questioned whether the media group was actually the one
behind it.
Although Chen was only one of the hundreds of netizens who posted the image
online, Lin seems to believe that Chen was the person who originally produced
the image, since he was quoted by the China Times yesterday as saying that Chen
was the person who took the photograph.
¡§Most of the people opposed to the merger of Want Want and CNS feel that way
because they worry that a media giant ... threatens the freedoms of the press
and of speech,¡¨ Chen said. ¡§What Lin and the media group have been doing these
past few days just proves that our worries are not baseless.¡¨
¡§As a mere student, I feel helpless, but I¡¦m determined to fight on, not only
for myself, but also for freedom of speech on the Internet,¡¨ Chen said.
Lin said in a telephone interview that he would sue Chen to defend his
reputation. Although he originally said he would file the lawsuit against Chen
because he believed Chen was the one who took the snapshot, Lin later said that
Chen was not his ultimate target.
¡§The purpose of the lawsuit is not to do something against a student, rather, it
is to find out who¡¦s behind the entire incident,¡¨ he said.
Lin told media that he would file the lawsuit at 2pm. As of press time, he had
yet to file anything.
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